Page 1 of After Everything
CHAPTER 1: EMMA
The best lies are the ones you tell yourself. Mine was that David worked late because he loved his job.
I was standing in our kitchen at eleven PM, staring at the plate I'd made for him three hours ago. The chicken had congealed into something gray and depressing, the roasted vegetables shriveled at the edges. My own plate sat in the sink, scraped clean an hour ago while I watched Netflix alone on the couch.
My phone buzzed on the counter.
Another hour, babe. Sorry. This case is killing me.
I'd been getting some version of that text every night for six months. Maybe longer. It's hard to pinpoint exactly when a marriage starts to rot. There's no clear expiration date, no warning label that says "best before infidelity." The changes come slowly, so gradually you don't notice until you're standing in your kitchen reheating pasta for one, telling yourself it's fine, he's just busy, this is temporary.
The ICU taught me to read monitors, to spot the subtle changes that mean someone's crashing before the alarms start screaming. A slight uptick in heart rate. Shallow breathing. The way a patient's eyes track the ceiling like they're already somewhere else.
I just never thought to apply those skills at home.
David had been distant for months. Not dramatically, not really. There was nothing you could point to and say, "There, that's when it started." Just small things. The way he'd angle his phone away when I walked into a room. How he'd started showering as soon as he got home instead of collapsingon the couch like he used to. The fact that "working late" had become his default state rather than the exception.
But I was tired.
Twelve-hour shifts in the ICU don't leave much energy for suspicion. And David was on the verge of making partner at his firm,Olson, Chen & Lowe, with it all hanging on this massive class action case his firm had partnered with another firm to handle. High stakes. Long hours. It made sense.
That's what I told myself, anyway.
It was easier than admitting I'd given up med school eight years ago to follow him across the country, only to watch him build the career I'd sacrificed mine for.
I dumped David's plate into the trash and poured myself a glass of wine. My second. Or third. Sad thing to say, but I'd already lost count. Not that I was surprised—after a long shift, being awake and semi-functional was already a victory.
Twelve hours of codes and critical patients and families asking me questions I wasn't allowed to answer. God, my feet ached. My back hurt. I wanted to take ashower and fall into bed, but David would feel guilty if I was already asleep when he got home, and then tomorrow he'd be weird about it, and I was too tired for the emotional labor of managing his guilt on top of everything else.
So I waited.
I opened my laptop at the kitchen island, thinking I'd pay some bills or browse mindlessly, anything to stay awake. The screen lit up, and there it was… David's iCloud account, still logged in from when he'd borrowed my computer last week to print something for work.
His messages loaded automatically.
I should have closed it. Should have respected his privacy, trusted my husband, been the bigger person.
Instead, I scrolled.
Work emails to his paralegal about filing deadlines. A group chat with his college buddies arguing about fantasy football. Messages to his mom about Thanksgiving plans. Normal. Boring. Exactly what you'd expect from a lawyer burning the midnight oil on a massive case.
I felt ridiculous. What was I doing? Snooping through my husband's messages like some paranoid?—
Then I saw her name.
Sarah Oakley.
I stopped scrolling. Sarah. His friend from college, the one at the other firm. The one he'd mentioned a few times when the case first started. "Sarah's lead counsel on their side, can you believe it? Haven't seen her since graduation." They were working together. Of course they were messaging. That made perfect sense.
Her profile picture loaded. Blonde hair, sharp cheekbones, one of those effortlessly perfect smiles that probably photographed well in every firm directory and legal publication. Beautiful in that polished, successful way that made you feel slightly inadequate even though you knew you shouldn't.
I reached for the laptop lid. This was stupid. I was tired, paranoid, letting my insecurities turn a work relationship into something it wasn't. David was at the office. Sarah was his colleague. They were working on a case together. That's all this was.
But then I saw the timestamp on her most recent message.
11:04 PM. Two minutes ago.
The same time David had texted me that he'd be another hour at the office.
